


Planet Without a Name

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Alien Planet, Friendship, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2617490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are stuck on a planet without a name and Tegan fears that can only mean trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Planet Without a Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merryghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/gifts).



Nyssa smiled at her serenely and right away Tegan felt a little better about the whole terrible, but familiar situation. “You know how it is, Tegan,” she said.

“Don't I just?” Tegan tried to smile back, but she was to exasperated with the whole situation to really find the scene before her funny any more. It felt like they'd been here too often already. She sighed.

They were both leaning against the side of the console room, watching the Doctor working beneath the Tardis console. Something had thrown them out of the Time Vortex, the console had spit sparks at them and groaned and the next thing they had all been thrown across the room, knocking into each other, falling and scrambling as the ship crashed into a planet or some other hard surface. 

She was beyond the point where things like this still could make her panic. She wasn't even angry or afraid. Just a bit bored at the prospect of being stuck inside the Tardis for another hour and impatient to get _somewhere_. “Doctor? Are we stuck here?” she asked.

“Patience, Tegan,” the Doctor muttered. She could imagine that he was making a face at her even questioning him in this although she couldn't see it. She stuck out her tongue at him in defiance and went back to surly lean against the wall, arms folded in front of her and letting him know she wasn't happy at all. 

“Where exactly are we?” Nyssa asked. 

“Where?” the Doctor said distractedly. “I'm not sure this planet has a name.”

“It hasn't got a name?” Tegan knew her voice was rising. “We're stuck somewhere without a name?”

“Every planet has a name,” Nyssa said reasonably. “Someone must have it on some star chart at least.”

“Well, this one hasn't,” the Doctor said, his voice taking on a metallic resonance. “Not yet anyway.” His tousled head appeared again, the untidiness making him look young and childish, but he was frowning a little. This was never a good sign. “It will have a name one day,” he said, “when the Human Empire expands and finds this little tranquil garden of a backwater planet.”

“So it's safe to go out?”

“Of course, of course,” the Doctor said, finally appearing from his work place, his hair sticking up in all directions and a smudge of some dark substance on his cheek and sleeve, but looking remarkably unfazed. “It's perfectly safe. Nothing much out there now. Well, no danger at least.”

“I've heard that one before. It never goes that way though does it, Doctor?”

He had pulled himself to his feet, patting his trousers legs to get rid of some invisible dust and then reached for his hat. “A little trust, please, Tegan,” he said with a huff. 

She gave him a pointed look. 

“Are you not going to finish the repairs?”

“Not now. Now we'll go out,” he said and opened the door.

* * *

The weather was lovely, but Tegan couldn't tell wether it was day or night or dusk. There were three suns in the sky, all dim and a strange sort of orange, shedding a not exactly bright light on them. The Doctor explained something about the planet's atmosphere and Nyssa nodded, listening to all the details with a rapt attention. 

“Where exactly is this planet?” she asked. The suns made it hard to make out much else against the strangely brown colored sky. 

The surrounding landscape wasn't anything to look at either. There was grass and bushy vegetation, even something that looked like flowers. But all of them were different shades of brown and rust and it was hard to even decide where one plant ended and another started all the details bleeding together into a smudge of brown. 

“It's not exactly dazzling,” she said.

“Oh, but it is,” the Doctor said with conviction and started moving forward again. 

Nyssa smiled at Tegan, making sure to walk beside her as they followed the Doctor. “I think he wants to show us something.”

“I think he is trying to get out of admitting we're stuck. And you know that always leads to trouble.”

The silence around them hadn't even registered with her while the Doctor had been talking, but now suddenly she became aware of their footsteps being the only source of sound around. It was so eerily quiet that over the slight rustling of the grass and leaves beneath their feet she could even hear Nyssa breathe steadily beside her. “The air is nice,” Nyssa said. “Reminds me of home.”

Nyssa rarely spoke of Traken and when she did there always was the slight note of pain and longing mixed into it. It broke Tegan's hear to think of her friend's loss. She had been complaining to the Doctor so frequently about him being unable to get her home, to the right place and right time, but at least even then she had known that earth was there and there was a home she could return to one day.

It was so easy to forget how lucky you were sometimes. 

“It's so quiet. It's eerie,” she said, looking over her shoulder. The quiet was making her nervous.

“It's peaceful,” the Doctor said.

Nyssa had caught on too. “There are no birds. No animals. Nothing.”

“No, not nothing,” the Doctor said and walked on smiling, his hands in his pockets.

“He's not really just making us walk around this planet, because he doesn't want to admit that we're stuck, is he?” Tegan whispered at Nyssa and then kicked a stone. The noise it made was disturbingly loud in the quiet of the alien afternoon.

* * *

The incredible thing about the whole trip was that nothing at all happened. She was so used to things ending with the Doctor stumbling into trouble that she only now realized that maybe they _had_ found the one peaceful place in the universe, where even the Doctor couldn't stumble into adventure.

She sat beside Nyssa on a little beach, smelling the ocean breeze and wondering at how strange her life was sometimes: sitting on an alien planet looking out on rust colored waves and enjoying a quiet day with friends. The Doctor was walking over the sand towards them, and it was ridiculous how out of place he looked here, they all did, with their colors and non-brownish complexions.

“Now watch,” he said and pointed towards the water.

She hadn't really payed attention to the suns or the time of day, because the light had barely changed since they'd arrived, but all suns were moving faster in the sky than she had first been aware and they were going to witness an alien sunset any minute now. The first sun touched the horizon and the dim light changed to something reddish brown with violet tones, turning nearly golden when the second sun joined it in it's descend. The colors were incredible and shedding their light on the landscape, reflecting on the brownish water. Everything suddenly had a shimmer, a glow.

It was incredible and beautiful.

They watched the whole display silently, the eerie silence no longer as threatening with the sound of the waves and the breathtaking sunset. 

Slowly the light got dimmer and dimmer and finally they were sitting in the near darkness.

Nyssa sighed. “That was beautiful.”

“It was,” Tegan agreed and was about to get up.

“Oh,” the Doctor said. “Don't get up. Just stay there and be silent.”

There was no urgency in his tone, but you never knew with the Doctor, so she kept down and listened for anything out in the dark. When the first sound came from the meadows behind them, she startled terribly. 

But then Nyssa breathed out an “Oh!” of surprise and there wasn't even a hint of fear inside.

She looked up and there was a small bird running from the bushes, making a squeaky sound. Its feathers glowing in an unearthly yellowish light. The meadows came alive with sound. Small animals started up their calls and rustled through the leaves. She couldn't make up all the shapes, but all of them were glowing or had markings of pure light on them.

Then butterflies started up, a whole big swarm of them, illuminating the surroundings enough for her to see Nyssa's face staring up in wonder. The swarm started fluttering over the water and everything was glittering and glowing again, like the sea was made of diamonds.

“One day,” the Doctor said. “the Andovarians will discover this little unimportant little dust-ball of a planet and call it Zrr'eck-rre. It means something shining in the dark. Then it'll have a name.”

* * *

They walked back to the Tardis slowly and in silence.

“That was beautiful, Doctor,” Nyssa said. “And peaceful.”

“It was amazing. Now we only have to get the Tardis going again and it will have been a wonderfully perfect vacation.”

The Doctor held the Tardis door open for them and they stepped through into the brightly lit console room.

“Oh, the repairs have been taken care of,” the Doctor said following them in.

“They have?” Nyssa looked at him startled.

“Yes, of course. I proposed the outing after I was finished.”

“We could have left all this time?” Tegan asked, also sounding surprised by the idea.

“You don't regret our little stroll, do you?”

“No,” both of them said at the same time. They looked at each other, as the Doctor went to chose new coordinates and start up the engines, and smiled.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Nyssa whispered. “It was a nice day.”

“I'll never forget it,” Tegan agreed.

“Good. Off we go then.” And with no more mention of his providing them with a perfectly peaceful day-off he took them into the time vortex.


End file.
